The Boundless Garden: Selected Short Stories, Volume I

Publication Data: Limni, Greece: Denise Harvey (Publisher), 2007
Format: softcover
Number of Pages: xxviii + 337
Dimensions (l × w × h): 24.1 cm × 15.5 cm × 2.5 cm
Additional Information: black-and-white illustrations
ISBN: 978‒960‒7120‒23‒6

   
Alexandros Papadiamandis
Edited by Lambros Kamperidis and Denise Harvey

Seventeenth Publication in The Romiosyni Series

“The short stories of Alexandros Papadiamandis are graced with an almost indefinable quality common to all great writers. This quality would seem to derive from an enthralment combined with a certain perplexity, an irresistible pull exerted by the author’s descriptions of a world of beauty and marvels which at the same time is filled with predicaments, human tragedies and humble triumphs. Like his contemporaries in the great European tradition of story-telling, Papadiamandis explores the souls of men and women as they succumb to or struggle against the power of evil—the Raskolnikovs, the Uriah Heeps and the Kareninas—people living on the edge of their capacity to deal with evil and who are tragically driven, by an irrational process, to the extremes of human vulnerability. Papadiamandis knew this European tradition intimately, learning his craft while translating many of the major authors of his time—Dostoyevsky, Chekov, de Maupassant and Alphonse Daudet—as well as some of the minor literary figures, including Bram Stoker, Hall Caine, Bret Harte, Georges Ohnet, and although he himself objected to it, he was even compared by some of his contemporaries to Edgar Allan Poe and Charles Dickens, most likely because of the tragic tenor of his work and his habit of marking Christmas and Easter by turning out a seasonal story. His literary field of reference, however, extended far beyond the nineteenth century and along with Homer, Plato and Hesiod he also drew on Dante and Shakespeare, easily integrating scenes and passages from their works into his writing.”
—“Introduction”

CONTENTS

BIOGRAPHICAL NOTE
INTRODUCTION
EDITORIAL NOTE
HANDMAIDEN
THE GLEANER
A VILLAGE EASTER
BLACK SCARF ROCK
POOR SAINT
CIVILIZATION IN THE VILLAGE
THE AMERICAN
A PILGRIMAGE TO THE KASTRO
CARNIVAL NIGHT
THE MONK
AT SAINT ANASTASA’S
AROUND THE LAGOON
FEY FOLK
SHIPWRECK’S WRECKAGE
THE EASTER CHANTER
THE LADY’S HOUSE
ENDNOTES
GLOSSARY
NOTES ON CONTRIBUTORS
MAP OF SKIATHOS